


fade to blue

by warriorbarrd



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Camp Chitaqua (Supernatural), Canon Compliant, Canon Temporary Character Death, Endverse!Cas, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, References to Croatoan/Endverse (Supernatural), Season 8, season 13, season 5, season 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 08:54:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28542882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warriorbarrd/pseuds/warriorbarrd
Summary: It felt like a miracle that the pocketed Camp Chitaqua photo had made it back to the present with Dean from the Endverse, or perhaps a curse.But it was the only photo of Cas he had and after he died, Dean wanted to drown in it.-Snapshots of Dean coping/not coping with losing Cas each time.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 6
Kudos: 46





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**Author's Note:**

> Fic is up to/including season 13 (and not 15x18) because I wanted it to have a happy ending and I'm not emotionally prepared enough to deal with that yet!

At the time, Dean had told both Sam and Cas the bare minimum about his trip to the future.

Sam knew Dean well enough to read the silences, the words Dean didn’t speak in his waking hours but sometimes choked out in a strangled scream while asleep. He asked once, right after Dean had called him and they’d met back up. Dean had stared at him for a moment, face pale and eyes unfocused, and Sam didn’t ask again.

It felt like a miracle that the pocketed photo had made it back to the present with him, but perhaps it was a curse.

For a few weeks afterwards, Dean would pull the photo from the journal - usually while Sam slept - to remind himself of the future he desperately wanted to avoid. To remind himself that he needed to be careful. Not just for the world, but for his … for Cas. To be careful _with_ Cas.

He had put it in his dad’s journal when he packed his stuff away for Sam, when he intended to say yes to Michael. He didn’t need to look at it anymore. That future wouldn’t exist; they were safe. But Dean was the one who ended up with the box in his garage, in his apple-pie-life, the journal packed away with his hunting tools.

Dean had almost forgotten about it until his resolve cracked once in the following year – just once – and he pulled out John’s journal, needing to feel some connection to his old life. He was slowly turning through the journal, not really reading it, just feeling the familiar weight of the pages in his fingers.

When he found the black and white photo between the pages, his hands froze. His chest tightened, the constant ache in his gut suddenly giving away to a dark emptiness. Seeing Cas’ face – even if it wasn’t really _him_ , even if it was in black and white – was like water to a burn under Dean’s skin. Blistering, sharp, brutal; but soothing and so soft it prickled his eyes.

At least he’d kept his promise to himself: he had saved Cas from becoming the broken man he’d met at Camp Chitaqua. In the end, it didn’t matter; Sam had said yes and won; Sam and Lucifer were in the cage; Cas had left him and gone back to Heaven; Zachariah’s future hadn’t come to pass.

It was just him left here.

He gripped the photo tightly in his hand, thumbing along the edge, memories bubbling like hot tar in his throat.

_“What, are you a hippie now?”_

_A cat-like stretch, hands clasped behind him while he rolled his shoulders._

_"I_ _thought you’d gotten over trying to label me.”_

_Something felt wrong._

_"Cas, we got to talk – “_

_He turned. Eyes unfocused. Unsteady. Cas had known instantly when he looked at him. He didn’t have his grace anymore, but he_ knew _that Dean was misplaced in time. How?_

_No angel wings. Stoned. A heaviness hiding behind a light smile, a pain too dark for Dean to comprehend for this achingly unfamiliar Cas in front of him. He started to reach out, to touch him and feel if he was real, but hesitated for a beat too long. Lowered his hand. What happened?_

_“Life.”_

\- - -

When Cas died, when the Leviathans ate through his body and walked into that lake, Dean had taken the photo out again. He’d tucked it inside the front cover of his dad’s journal, protecting it from folds, tears and stains.

It was the only photo of Cas he had.

He wanted to hold on to the memories of a lighter Cas - even if it was a broken Cas - who had his feet kicked up on the table, watching Dean’s future self with a disconnected gaze that he couldn’t seem to hold. Every few seconds looking down at his hands; at Risa; at Dean in the corner. His movements erratic, so unlike the Cas Dean knew, that watching him gave Dean whiplash.

_“What? I like past you!”_

Dean wanted to drown in that image of him. Feel Cas’ hands on him again, hear the laugh that sounded so wrong coming out of Cas’ mouth.

He drowned himself in a bottle instead.

\- - -

Sam found Dean one night, passed out on the floor of the abandoned house they were squatting in; empty whiskey bottle at his side, their dad’s journal open on Dean’s duffle bag. Resting on it was a black and white photo Sam didn’t immediately recognise from a distance. He sidestepped Dean’s passed out body to pick it up.

He frowned.

It took several long seconds for the cogs to slip into place, bringing with them a punch of recognition and grief for his brother. Bobby in a wheelchair. Cas in borrowed clothes, holding a rifle. _Camp Chitaqua._

Sam quietly put the photo back before Dean woke up. He wanted more than anything to help Dean through this loss, but he knew he couldn’t. Dean wouldn’t let him. So Sam hid the full whiskey bottle in his own duffle, away from where Dean would grab it as soon as he woke, and cursed the memory of their friend as he sank onto one of the old dining chairs.

\- - -

_Cas._

He choked the name out in his nightmares, the dark Purgatory flashbacks mixing with the forgotten future until Dean was screaming for Cas in a haze of blood and sulphur. Sometimes he’d find him, looking up at him from the ground, his loose blue shirt stained dark with blood and vomit, eyes glassy, pill bottle loose in his hand.

Other times, Dean would be running with Benny, and they’d come across a building surrounded by abandoned cars and a tall broken fence.

_Gunfire. Screaming._

Dean would run toward the building, a gnawing in the pit of his stomach, stumbling into the garden to meet Lucifer … but it wasn’t future Dean’s neck that he was standing on. It was Cas’. Their eyes met, blood gurgling out of Cas’ mouth as he stretched his arm toward Dean – _crack! –_ his eyes fell closed. Dean ran to his side, unable to utter a single word as Lucifer stepped away and Dean dropped to Cas’ side, cradling his head in his hands.

He’d wake with tears on his face, breathing harshly, and reach for a bottle.

Sometimes late at night, while he was fighting to stay awake as long as possible, other memories would reach out to grasp his heart. The hard heat between his future self and Cas as they prepared for battle. Cas’ resignation to the suicidal plan with a shrug of his lithe shoulders as he left the cabin that night. Dean running to catch up with him afterwards, finding him sitting on the floor on his cabin with a shot glass on his knee, a half bottle of absinthe next to him, and a joint between his fingers.

_“How did you know it wasn’t me – now me, I mean.”_

_“Your eyes,” Cas said, taking a hit and looking up at the ceiling as he inhaled the smoke into his lungs. “Your face. Your whole body, really.” He exhaled, casting his eyes back to Dean in the doorway. “You’re just not him.” He sounded almost wistful in a way that made Dean feel like he’d missed a step going downstairs. He’d sat next to Cas, crossing his legs like him but using his left hand out behind him for balance. He’d taken the joint from Cas, fingers brushing against each other, and raised it to his own lips. Cas tracked the movement of his hand with surprising sharpness._

The pain of losing Cas to Purgatory almost crippled him. He took out the old photo again but couldn’t look at it for more than a moment. After their time in Purgatory, the photo from the future-that-never-was seemed pale, no matter how vividly he relived it in his mind.

After a few weeks, when he began seeing Cas around him, Dean felt like he brought it on himself. He was going insane. Too many moments where he hadn’t been able to save Cas, and now he was being haunted by his own pain.

But he was back again.

\- - -

Mary asked him about it when she got back. Sam had given her John’s journal and she’d found the photo tucked in the front. She brought it up with him in the kitchen while he was making toast, a gentle question about Bobby in a wheelchair and Castiel with a gun (an angel with a rifle, seriously?).

Dean played it off, a laugh about a future that didn’t happen after all, and he gently took the photo from her hand, tucking it into his back pocket.

It was the only photo of Cas he had, and so he placed it into the box with his other snapshots. His parents, the old house, Sammy … his family. He made a mental note to take another picture, one framing a happy memory instead of a waking reminder to be careful with Cas. Dean didn’t need that reminder anymore; Cas had lost his grace and regained it, all without Dean tearing him apart. That future was gone, that Cas was gone, Dean never broke him.

It was okay … wasn’t it?

He needed to get a new photo of Cas, but he wouldn’t give up this one.

He owed it to this forgotten Cas, the man who had given everything to Dean and been torn apart for it.

\- - -

An angel blade through Cas’ chest.

A burning pyre.

The cold bile that he choked down with beer and whiskey and whatever else he could find.

He was done. He couldn’t do this again.

Trying to push through, trying to force himself to be alright for Sam, for the job, Dean had gone to the strip club alone. He’d tried, even though his heart – hell, his brain, hands, _skin_ \- was protesting violently.

One of the women gave him a shot of absinthe. Ran her hands over his shoulders, down his arms -

 _Cas moved to him, kneeling to straddle Dean’s legs, lowering himself to sit in his lap. Cas’ hands gripped his biceps, steadying them both as they found their balance, Dean’s left arm still behind him for support –_

She leaned in close, whispering in his ear –

_“Dean,” murmured Cas, eyelids heavy, waiting for permission. Dean stared at him, skin buzzing with barely contained electricity, throat dry from the weed and the weight of Cas pressing down on him –_

She trailed her fingertips over his collarbone to the back of his neck –

_Dean tilted his head back a little, catching Cas’ gaze and holding it, thoughts stumbling into each other in his head, battling for his attention through the haze. He ignored them all. Stretched up, just a little, and pressed a kiss to Cas’ lips. Cas kissed him back, gently, hands moving from Dean’s arm to cup his face, fingers caressing the back of his neck as the kiss hardened, fierce desperation to hold each other, Dean slipping his hand up Cas’ shirt to feel the muscles along his back, a gasp as Cas ground down on him –_

He pulled away as a surge of nausea hit him, pushing himself out of the chair past the poor stripper. She cried out in a surprise, but Dean barely heard her. His skin felt bruised and burning cold, like he had a fever, his brain hazy and disjointed. He pulled a few notes from his wallet before he’d thought about it, dropping them onto the chair and grabbing his suit jacket.

With barely a coherent thought of ‘ _have to get out of here,’_ Dean stumbled into the street, the wrenching nausea and prickling skin contributing more to his stance than the booze. He couldn’t breathe. He wondered vaguely if he’d been slipped something, but after a minute in the chill air, almost doubled over, he recognised the onslaught of despair.

He lowered himself to the ground – no doubt looking like a drunk to the quiet street – and sat with his back against the building. The pain settled in his chest, deep inside where he knew he wouldn’t be able to cut it out if he tried. He wanted to cry, but it was too deep for that.

He stayed there for almost an hour, until a bouncer finally moved him on. He trudged back to the motel room, hoping Sam was already asleep. The rest of the case was going to be a nightmare of holding himself together until they got back to the bunker. More than ever, he needed to look at that stupid photo and punch something. Maybe if he clutched Cas’ face in his memories hard enough, he could wash away the crawling under his skin.

\- - -

They were finally on their drive back when he got the phone call.

_Cas._

\- - -

Dean couldn’t remember feeling so light. Cas was wearing the stupid hat Dean had grabbed for him (it looked better without the red band, but the thought had maybe crossed Dean’s mind that he should get Cas a _real_ Stetson), and despite the early fumble with the local badges, things were looking good.

The sun was warm, sky clear, and Dean caught himself staring at Cas more than once in a few minutes. Cas didn’t seem to notice, but then he was usually doing a lot of staring of his own so wasn’t used to Dean’s eyes secretly on him.

“Cas – hang on,” said Dean suddenly, a grin breaking across his face as he pulled his phone from his pocket.

“Dean,” Dean could hear the slight exasperation, but he ignored it. “What are you doing?”

“We need a photo! D’you know I’ve only got – we don’t have a picture of us. What better time than a trip to Dodge City?”

He hoped Cas didn’t notice his misstep, but he suddenly felt warmer as Cas narrowed his eyes, like he was focusing his gaze to see straight through Dean’s weak explanation.

He tried not to look too desperate. Finally, Cas conceded.

“Fine, but no hat.”

Dean pouted as Cas walked over to him, taking off the hat and rolling his eyes, but Dean could see a smile tugging at his lips. He held his arm out and, after a brief pause, Cas stepped into his side, filling the space Dean had made for him. Dean lay his hand on Cas’ back gingerly, hyperaware of the texture of the coat beneath his fingers, and the strong muscle of Cas’ shoulder underneath.

Almost as cautiously, Cas put his arm around Dean’s waist to lock their position, sending a rush of heat along Dean’s stomach. He raised his other hand, phone on the selfie camera, and he watched their faces on the screen as easy, tender smiles appeared.

He clicked the button.

Now, he finally had a photo of Cas – _his_ Cas, the one with hope and grace and love for those around him. The one who watches too much TV, who regularly laments the loss of his human tastebuds, who has a son and family and hasn’t been irreparably taken apart by someone he loves. It didn’t matter if his Cas never loved him the way the other Cas had (needed him, desired him, _wanted_ him), he was more whole, more himself, and Dean would take that any day.

Cas pulled away from him, leaving Dean’s side strangely chilled, and put the hat back on as he stepped back and watched the sheriff’s department work.

“Come on,” he said with a rough voice, “if we’re good here, it’s time to meet back up with Jack and Sam.”

Dean nodded, the corners of his eyes crinkling up fondly.

Before he turned, he aimed his phone back at Cas, discretely taking a quick photo of the angel wearing the dumb cowboy hat.

Now, finally, Dean was good.


End file.
